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The late-night hosts felt the pressure almost immediately. They were all writers themselves, of course, and members of the Writers Guild of America. But they were also signature stars for their networks, and so usually much closer to the network management than stars of sitcoms in Hollywood were. The top network executives, sensing one way to undermine the solidarity of the union and its supporters among actors, directors, and the other Hollywood guilds, almost immediately pushed for the late-night hosts to return to work. They argued that the hosts could mount shows without the writers.

The hosts had to add that pressure to the pain the strike was inflicting on their nonwriting staff members. Segment producers, researchers, assistants, and artists would all go without pay as the result of a game in which they had no stake. NBC told the producers of its two late-night shows that it would pay the staff through November, but after that layoffs would begin.

O’Brien was the first host to pledge that he would pay the staff out of his own pocket, if it came to that. Jeff Ross made that promise public but tried to shame the network a bit by adding, “We’re hoping it will not be necessary because GE’s pockets are a lot deeper than Conan’s.”

OʹBrien was not the only host taking steps to protect his staff. Jon Stewart had already given his group a similar assurance. David Letterman’s Worldwide Pants was already responsible for paying his staff directly, because in his unique arrangement with CBS, Letterman owned his show. The company announced that the staff of Letterman’s Late Show as well as that of The Late Late Show—which had installed Craig Ferguson as the new host less than a year earlier—would continue to be paid, but not in full. (Rob Burnett was already plotting a special course of action for Worldwide Pants.)

Quietly several of the shows in New York began back-channel talks among themselves, hoping that there might be safety in numbers if they acted in concert in returning to the air. Letterman had to be looked to as the leader—he was the longest-serving host and obviously the prime mover in New York. All the shows wanted to return to the air, but they also wanted to respect the writers and their cause, and they also didn’t want to run afoul of any union strictures about what would be allowed on the air if they did return. (In essence, no written material, only ad libs, would be permitted.)

Meanwhile, out west, Jay Leno was looking to do a little back-channeling of his own. While he made some gestures of support for the writers, including turning up on the picket lines with a stash of doughnuts, being off the air always drove Jay a little buggy. If there was going to be a way to get back on TV, Jay wanted to explore it. He reached out to a guy he suspected might be a kindred spirit, at least during the strike: ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel.

That Jay could even have a civil discussion of any kind with Kimmel seemed beyond imagining only a short time earlier. Late-night competitors may have a history of barbed comments about each other; Kimmel’s early remarks about Jay were barbarous. A lifelong Letterman disciple, Jimmy had arrived in the late-night cauldron in 2003 spilling over with disdain for Leno and his brand of comedy.

First Kimmel gave an interview in which he said of his upcoming ABC show, “I want to do the comedy version of The Tonight Show.ʺ Then, after Jay called Kimmel’s publicist to complain, Kimmel said he had only been goofing around, though he couldn’t help reacting publicly to the phone call by saying, “It’s just amazing how insecure he is.” Kimmel clearly had the prevailing view of most Letterman devotees: “Leno was so great when he was a guest on Letterman. Great, great. I just think he worked it too hard. I think he turned comedy into factory work—and it comes across.”

Kimmel even rationalized about becoming a competitor to the great Dave himself by turning it against Leno. “I figure this: The people who like Leno are largely the stupid group. The people who root